Usless Science Forum
The Psyche => Science and Psychology => Topic started by: Matt Koeske on March 28, 2008, 12:31:55 PM
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Steven Pinker's latest book, The Stuff of Thought (http://www.amazon.com/Stuff-Thought-Language-Window-Nature/dp/0670063274/), has more to do with the field of linguistics, while his previous book, The Blank Slate (http://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0142003344/), focused on evolutionary psychology. Still, I happened upon this passage below in which Pinker makes a connection between Kant's thinking and contemporary evolutionary psychology (and the revisionary theory of linguistics Pinker is proposing). The connection has to do with what we Jungians would call the archetypal structure of the mind.
But Pinker doesn't mention Jung and his theory of archetypes. Granted, Jung was very much influenced by Kant, but I think it's fair to say that Jung's incorporation of the innate ground of structural representations of the psyche (archetypes) with data from the fields of cultural anthropology, clinical psychology, religion, mythology, and literature, as well as his own various studies of symbolism . . . make Jung's construction of archetypal theory much more modern and relevant (to evolutionary psychology and Pinker's thinking) than Kant's abstract, categorizing philosophy.
Why then doesn't Pinker mention Jung in this passage?
Because Pinker, like all of the contemporary evolutionary psychologists, pays no attention to Jungian writing whatsoever and has probably never considered that reading Jung would be in any way valuable to his research and theory building. My point here is not to bemoan the neglect of Jung by more modern and more scientific thinkers . . . or to wag a finger at those more modern, scientific thinkers. I mean merely to use this passage as an example of the impending obsolescence of Jungian psychology. What Jung and his followers intuited and elaborated on is not a secret knowledge that can only be obtained through spiritual experience and Kundalini awakening. It is absolutely accessible by rationalist thinkers like Steven Pinker. The field of evolutionary psychology will manage to learn everything about the psyche that the Jungians know . . . and more. And they will manage to do this without ever cracking one of Jung's books.
The "travesty" of this is not that the Jungians will be shunted aside again. The travesty is that Jungians are doing almost nothing to try to bridge the gap between Jungian thinking and evolutionary psychology. We have at least a few decades of a head start on the evolutionary psychologists . . . and we have accumulated or organized immense amounts of data on the functioning of the psyche. The evolutionary psychologists are limited in their rate of progress by being generally un-intuitive thinkers who learn by formulating small scientific studies. So they are learning what Jung learned from studying myth, religion, and dream . . . but at a slower, more systematic pace.
The progress of evolutionary psychology is like a virtual gauntlet thrown down to the Jungians. From our perspective, it is more like the rumbling of a distant juggernaut closing in on our little grotto where nymphs and satyrs play. Even as it rolls right over us, it will never know we are there. But after that happens, Jungian psychology will not be able to go on in any credible form. The language in which we construct the psyche will have been rendered extinct. No one will use the term "archetype" any longer. No one will have any need or desire to go back to Jung's writing for terms or ideas or references.
Perhaps some form of Jungianism will linger on. Most likely the New Age interpretations that will sell self-help books and don't need to be founded on credible theories or pay any attention to data. It's possible that even some form of the Jungian professional community will survive. But any viable form of psychotherapy needs a theory of psyche to be useful as therapy . . . and in order for Jungians to stay in business, they will have to outsource their theory-making to more contemporary and credible schools of thought (and how, then, could they remain "Jungians").
This strikes me as terribly sad, because I feel Jungian thinking still has much to offer psychology. But the saddest thing of all is that so few Jungians either recognize the problem of impending obsolescence or care enough to do anything to stave it off and help the Jungian tribe become more adaptive. Such ignorance of the world around us, of the environment or intellectual ecosystem we live in is not befitting of conscious human beings. Which is to say, in our romantic regressions, we have regressed to a pre-conscious, and possibly a pre-human, state. And this is the progeny of Carl Jung, champion of individuation.
Recognizing the problem of obsolescence in the Jungian tribe is the easy part. The hard part is finding a viable way to adapt. And we are miles and miles away from beginning to make that attempt.
Kant tried to forge a synthesis of empiricism and rationalism which, in rough outline, works well in today's nature-nurture debate. The mind is not a mere associator of sensory impressions (as in the empiricism of his day and the connectionism of ours), nor does it come equipped with actual knowledge about the contents of the world (as in some versions of the rationalism of his day and in the Extreme Nativism of ours). What the innate apparatus of the mind contributes is a set of abstract conceptual frameworks that organize our experience—space, time, substance, causation, number, and logic (today we might add other domains like living things, other minds, and language). But each of these is an empty form that must be filled in by actual instances provided by the senses or the imagination. As Kant put it, his treatise "admits absolutely no divinely implanted or innate representations. . . . There must, however, be a ground in the subject which makes it possible for these representations to originate in this and no other manner. . . . This ground is at least innate.” Kant's version of nativism, with abstract organizing frameworks but not actual knowledge built in to the mind, is the version that is most viable today, and can be found, for example, in Chomskyan linguistics, evolutionary psychology, and the approach to cognitive development called domain specificity. One could go so far as to say that Kant foresaw the shape of a solution to the nature-nurture debate: characterize the organization of experience, whatever it is, that makes useful learning possible.
[p.160, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature]
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79 pages later, Pinker demonstrates his ignorance of Jung's thinking when he actually applies the term "Jungian". As in "After all, today's Anglophones don't have a Jungian collective memory for the metaphoric imagination of long-dead speakers." [p.239, The Stuff of Thought]
This is the general modern conception of Jungian thinking among academics who don't read Jung (the vast majority of modern academics). This accusation is actually something Jung was dealing with in his own lifetime . . . and attempted to refute a number of times in his books. It's essentially the accusation of Lamarckism (the acquisition or development of genetic traits during an individual's lifetime based on individual experience). Jung did his best to refute such accusations (and stick to his Darwinian foundation), but of course, if the accusers don't actually read Jung's books, they have no way of recognizing this refutation.
Again, my point is to pose this to the Jungians as a question (a scolding question, yes, but still a question): Why have we let this misinterpretation of Jungian thinking persist? Why haven't we made a more significant attempt to refute it?
My guess is that this failure is largely a matter of two causes. First, that reclusive, cultish, tribalism (that Richard Noll accurately noted was in the Jungian shadow . . . before deciding to magnify it to paranoid proportions). We have our tight knit kin-based tribe, and we stubbornly (and primitivistically) think we don't need the rest of the modern world. I.e., we are regressivists and fundamentalists. "Who cares what the So-and-Sos think?" we chant to ourselves. Why adapt when we can abscond into an abstract and imagined utopia?
Second, Jungians since Jung have fallen dangerously away from Darwinian and biological understandings of the psyche. Many of us probably have no concept of the difference between Lamarckism and Darwinism. And we really don't care about these fundamental building blocks of Jungian theory, because we mostly have our heads high up in the starry firmament. Yes, we prefer phenomena to the things themselves . . . and the experience of that phenomena is highly valued by us. But we have lost touch with "Isness", what Jung mostly associated with the sensation function. Isness is radically devalued in the intuitive-favoring Jungian attitude.
But when our intuitive and phenomenological occupations cut our tether from the actual, we simply drift away into limitless space. There, in the abstract, we lose all ability to differentiate. Now, instead of science or logic or reason, we depend on belief to determine our truths. We have merely returned to the Maternal world of animism, projecting our instincts haphazardly into all sorts of ideas and things.
We need to rediscover the difference between things in themselves and our projections into those things. We have lost ourselves in participation mystique with our sparkly mystical baubles and occult knickknacks. We no longer exist as conscious individuals. We can't differentiate self and Other clearly.
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Matt,
In an earlier post ( http://uselessscience.com/forum/index.php?topic=259.msg984#msg984 )I attempted to call attention to, basically, same the idea. Here is a critical portion from the post:
Studies of everyday reasoning show that we usually use reason to search for evidence to support our initial judgment, which was made in milliseconds. . .
I speculate that the source of the "initial judgment" are the archetypes. Then our consciousness, adapted to the culture, creates evidence to support the initial judgment.
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After reading a few remarks that suggest that evolutionary psychology is the answer to all shortcomings of the psychological sciences, I decided to check out what evolutionary psychology has to say about the enigmatic problem of anorexia nervosa. Here is what one of those jokers had to say (which in my opinion isn't worth bothering to read):
"How can we understand the phenomenon of anorexia nervosa in Western society?
The evolutionary explanation for obesity seems obvious and straightforward. However, a greater challenge for evolutionary psychology would be to account for anorexia nervosa, seemingly the opposite problem.
During human evolution it would not have been adaptive to always eat everything in site, but rather it would have important to effectively ration during lean times, as well as eating up during more abundant times. Thus, the capacity to "go without food" would have been important for survival. This is a difficult proposition, because it implies the development of a higher instinct than the immediate instinct to gratify hunger.
Given that humans are creatures that evolved in social groups, presumably the capacity to "go without food" for the sake of the group would have been socially reinforced. Those who didn't possess this capacity would have been punished by the group, if they had sufficient power. Thus, it can seen that eating food would have evolved with a complex individual and social psychology associated. The immediate pleasure and gratification associated with eating would have been tempered by higher faculties and social norms emphasizing eating a minimum for current survival in order to help maximize longer likelihood of survival.
In the modern human, if there is an overactive super-ego or over susceptibility to social messages about "eating less", then maladaptive behavior behavior patterns such anorexia and binge eating / vomiting can manifest around the "withholding of food despite hunger" disposition which has evolved in humans."
Some time this year I will be publishing my book, The Queen of Wonderland, on the nature of anorexia nervosa from a Jungian perspective and I can tell you that neither the clowns at the school of evolutionary psychology nor any of the schools of modern psychology will ever crack this one on their own.
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After reading a few remarks that suggest that evolutionary psychology is the answer to all shortcomings of the psychological sciences, I decided to check out what evolutionary psychology has to say about the enigmatic problem of anorexia nervosa. Here is what one of those jokers had to say (which in my opinion isn't worth bothering to read):
. . .
Some time this year I will be publishing my book, The Queen of Wonderland, on the nature of anorexia nervosa from a Jungian perspective and I can tell you that neither the clowns at the school of evolutionary psychology nor any of the schools of modern psychology will ever crack this one on their own.
Hi Malcolm,
I do not feel that evolutionary psychology has or is the answer to everything. For instance, it is a non-clinical field of psychology . . . and so whoever made the comments on anorexia nervosa you mention is speaking entirely out of his or her area of knowledge.
As a Jungian, I am interested in critiquing and contributing to Jungian thinking. I am not an evolutionary psychologist, nor do I aspire to be one. Although evolutionary psychology is not a uniform "school" (but a field of psychology), I think it's still fair to say that the field is oriented toward more general theories of the human psyche and human behavior. It draws its data from scientific experiments in biology and cognitive studies, and its proponents (from what I've read) tend to be less intuitive, more rational. They make small steps based on scientifically evaluated data, no intuitive leaps like Jungians or philosophers. It's not that common that any credible and respected evolutionary psychologists would try to "over-apply" simplified Darwinism (or Social Darwinism) to a complex issue in order to reduce it to a seemingly evolutionary paradigm.
That sort of reductive thinking is idiotic in any field (including Jungian psychology) . . . and such overblown idiocy can't survive for long in a modern field in which data is scientifically tested and the scientific method is applied.
The importance of evolutionary psychology to Jungian thinking is largely a matter of evolutionary psychology's studies (or borrowed data from other fields) having an excellent chance of scientifically validating Jung's archetypal theory (which, as I'm sure you are aware, has been chuckled off by most modern academics, scientists, and medical psychiatrists). But, as I said above, the evolutionary psychologists know nothing about Jung and would never "stoop" to read anyone so lacking in scientific reputation.
I feel this is to their loss. But they are not my "tribe", and the Jungians are. On the other side of this coin, the scientific data of the evolutionary psychologists seemingly validating archetypal theory should (in my opinion) have (at least) two beneficial effects on Jungianism. First, it should feel validating of a Jungian intuition we have generally all shared since Jung first wrote about archetypes. This validation should reinvigorate lapsed (even atrophied) Jungian interest in theory building and revising. It's a wake-up call to Jungians everywhere that tells us that we are not merely occult mystics playing tarot and fiddling with sand castles and active imagination fantasies. We were, i.e., Jung was truly ahead of his time . . . and unique, not only for being so exceptionally intuitive, but for being, as an intuitive, so accurate and rational as well as spiritualistic and "inspired".
This boost should encourage us to question why we have let our more scientific theory-building evaporate so dramatically . . . as if we were either not smart enough or too lazy to bother with the rigors of self-questioning (which we have abandoned along with "rationalistic" science). In Jungian terms, "shadow work". By any name we call it, it doesn't matter . . . we have failed to do it adequately. "Bad rationalism" cannot be made culprit for what is in reality a moral failing epidemic in the Jungian tribe.
The second "should-be" impact of evo. psych. on Jungianism has to do with the potential contributions a more Darwinian/evolutionary/biological input of data and ideas could have on Jungian thinking. We could keep revising and improving our theoretical understanding of psychic structure and phenomenon by drawing on this data. Jung himself encouraged such revision and growth in his followers . . . just as Jung drew extensively from the available scientific knowledge and data of his time. I have no doubt that he would have found the fairly new field of evolutionary psychology deeply stimulating. Jung was never a fundamentalist. He drew from everything he could get his hands on, every scientific field, every art, every occult mysticism.
One of the benefits of incorporating the data and thinking of evolutionary psychology into Jungian thinking is that it allows us to begin recognizing that aspects of the psyche we have referred to in spiritual or mythical or "psychoid" terms are actually much more material and biological than we had guessed. We Jungians have been paying attention to psychic phenomena, but we have been operating in the dark, and have only drawn very vague notions of why these phenomena have appeared as ordered and typical as they have. Bringing an increased biological and evolutionary understanding of human cognition and patterns of behavior will allow our "laboratories" to finally install some lights.
Regrettably (and this is the nature of my gripe in this thread and elsewhere), we Jungians have not reacted to the "good news" of evolutionary psychology with spiked excitement and a renewal of creative libido. Instead, we have mostly pulled our heads back into our shells and waddled back to the New Age happyland that has been our (very Maternal) shelter from the storm (I'm thinking of Bob Dylan's song of that name). As far as I can see, the only reasons we have to ignore interesting and pertinent new data (that happens also to be scientific), even data that could easily be seen to validate Jung's archetypal theory . . . are that we have either grown immensely lazy and stupid or we have ceased to be anything like a science and have fully embraced Jungianism as a kind of religion . . . whose laws are to be believed in and followed like any other religious dogma.
Evolutionary psychology is a fledgling field still. They haven't caught up to intuitive Jungians in the recognition of archetypal phenomena. But they will. Right now, it will take creative, innovative thinking to figure out how to build a bridge between this field and Jungian psychology. We cannot just take on their theories wholesale (as another dogma). We will have to work to figure out what aspects of evolutionary psychology inform and could benefit Jungian thinking (and vice versa). These bridging ideas are not available yet. The Jungian analyst, Anthony Stevens, has tried to build such a bridge, and although he has been largely and unjustly ignored or dismissed by many Jungians, I don't think his bridge is really sound and sturdy enough to convey ideas and data back and forth effectively.
One of the reasons we started Useless Science was to imagine and put creative work into this bridging project. But I want to be perfectly clear about the fact that there is no Holy Grail waiting for us to pick up and Know the Truth through. What I see is an opportunity to engage in a massive and complicated project (a project with what has long been Other to us) . . . that yet stands a good chance of eventually becoming not only fruitful for Jungianism, but deeply regenerative. Perhaps even a salvation (if my concern that Jungianism is an endangered species is in any way valid).
Our intuition is not only good for imagining gods. It has more practical applications, too . . . like recognizing potentials and opportunities. The Philosophers' Stone isn't lying at our feet to pick up. We still have to do the Work. But every opportunity to grow is prima materia, an invitation for such Work. And nothing, in my opinion, is more rare and wonderful than such invitations.
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Modern psychology is not about psychology as a science but about the science of finding ways to make their charges adapt to modernism. Consequently it is totally contrary to Jungian psychology, which is about the understanding of the needs of the soul and how these needs can be met in society.
I haven't read any evolutionary psychology literature, but from a distance, all I can see is another branch of scientific materialism trying to explain the mind in a way that reduces it to the same sort of raw materials that Victor Frankenstein was after in his experiments to create life in the laboratory. I may be wrong on this, but at any rate evolutionary psychology won't help solve the dilemma of what self-destructive behaviour is about. Modern psychology has proved itself totally useless in this endeavour, but nonetheless totally refuses to consider that the unconscious factors could be responsible for this sort of behaviour simply because it is being deliberately ignored by modernism.
Every school of modern psychology has so far only advanced sociological explanations for self-destructive behaviour. All their so-called scientific experiments are based upon literalism and rationalism, when the psyche is anything but literal or rational. So far nobody has answered any of my criticisms of modern psychology's incompetence. All I hear is that Jung was a mystic or worse by people who have no real understanding of Jungian psychology.
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Modern psychology is not about psychology as a science but about the science of finding ways to make their charges adapt to modernism. Consequently it is totally contrary to Jungian psychology, which is about the understanding of the needs of the soul and how these needs can be met in society.
Or, to use a more evolutionary language, we could say Jungian psychology is about adapting or finding a functional equilibrium in the act of living (in the world). My concern is that Jungian psychology could be doing a much better job of promoting adaptation if it made more of an effort to incorporate new data (and data from other fields) and to shear some of the woolliness out of its increasingly archaic language and concepts. I.e, just because other forms of more-positivistic/less-therapeutic psychology have not produced any more-viable solutions to the problem of living in the modern world doesn't mean that Jungian psychology should rest on its (fantasized) laurels.
What I would object to in your characterizations (and in the Jungian mindset in general) is that there is some kind of tribal conflict inherent and necessary between Jungianism and other forms of academic or more widely embraced modern psychologies. I don't see truth in one camp and falsity in another. I see polarization that is harmful to both camps . . . and I don't think that polarization is necessary. So long as positivistic psychologists refuse to study dreams, fantasies, art, the unconscious, etc. and Jungians refuse to pay attention to scientific research and credible scientific theories, both tribes will stall in their development (really, they already have . . . quite some time ago).
I haven't read any evolutionary psychology literature, but from a distance, all I can see is another branch of scientific materialism trying to explain the mind in a way that reduces it to the same sort of raw materials that Victor Frankenstein was after in his experiments to create life in the laboratory.
No doubt some evolutionary psychologists lean this way. But I am looking at the potential of evolutionary psychology . . . and it is something that I get the feeling the evolutionary psychologists themselves don't even recognize yet. They are the kind of people inclined to see the trees but miss the forest. But they are tagging those trees one by one, and logically, one day, they will have the data necessary to "construct" the forest. The Jungians by contrast, never see trees, only forests. But because they never see the trees, the "quanta of the forest", they don't understand adequately how forests grow or the details of the ecosystems they help sustain. The Jungians know the myths of the forest . . . and these can sometimes be a lot more helpful in understanding the dynamic of the forest than positivists realize. But what is most noticeably missing from the Jungian perception is the way Nature works within that forest dynamic or ecosystem. Natural complexity.
I may be wrong on this, but at any rate evolutionary psychology won't help solve the dilemma of what self-destructive behaviour is about. Modern psychology has proved itself totally useless in this endeavour, but nonetheless totally refuses to consider that the unconscious factors could be responsible for this sort of behaviour simply because it is being deliberately ignored by modernism.
Your area of research is one I don't want to pretend I know enough about to discuss intelligently . . . but it is possible that evolutionary psychology could contribute its evolutionary paradigm to the understanding of destructive behavior. That is, the behavior that is considered (by humans) most destructive may also be behavior that is maladaptive or doesn't serve the biological drive for establishing equilibrium with the environment (or genetic perpetuation of the species). Of course, that's very general . . . and I don't mean that therefore the "juggernaut" of evopsych should tear through the area of destructive behavior theory and "eliminate the competition". I just mean to say that often the most effective approach to understanding any phenomena is an eclectic one. We can learn very important things from all kinds of sources . . . even our "enemies".
Oh, also, the phase of modern psychology in which the unconscious was ignored is over or rapidly coming to an end. The thriving areas of cognitive science and artificial intelligence (not to mention systems theory) are interested in the construction of consciousness or intelligence from primarily unconscious and unintelligent quanta and "nodes" or cognitive apparatuses that contribute to what we perceive as consciousness while not perceiving the components that make up consciousness. The notion that cognition is mostly unconscious is a core tenet of cognitive science.
Every school of modern psychology has so far only advanced sociological explanations for self-destructive behaviour. All their so-called scientific experiments are based upon literalism and rationalism, when the psyche is anything but literal or rational.
I agree that the psyche tends to be non-literal, but I think the notion that the psyche is irrational is archaic and no longer tenable. It is, in my opinion, the limited perception of the ego that looks upon the natural complexity of the psyche and, not being able to comprehend it, labels it "irrational". That is, I am interpreting "irrational" as behavior (of the psyche) that certifiably serves no purpose and is also not the effect of some definable cause. We could equally say that that definition better applies to the term "illogical", not to "irrational". That is, "irrational" could then be said to be that which defies egoic reasoning, which would indicate that "rationality" is perceptual. And therefore, "irrationality" is not necessary "illogical" or lacking in order or causal structure, but is merely something that egoic reasoning has a hard time understanding or relating to.
This is a little closer to the Jungian definition or "irrational", but this perceptual definition of rationalism doesn't satisfy me, because it effectively declares that the only possible perspective on the psyche is the absolutely egoic one. I disagree. Many of our behaviors and most of our cognition is unconscious, even unintentioned or autonomous . . . and yet it can be observed in various ways and clearly produces effects. I don't think a "psychology of the unconscious" or a depth psychology can limit itself to the absolutely egoic perspective. In fact, I don't think the term psychology can be used if we insist upon the egoic perspective only . . . because the ego cannot study psyche as a whole. The ego has a skewed perspective on psyche (or Self), as the ego has specifically evolved to filter and condense information for short-term manipulation. The ego has not evolved to "see clearly", but to interpret quickly which information is most pertinent to immediate or short-term action.
I feel that psyche, then, is best studied by the phenomena it produces . . . and from a perspective that is "scientifically detached" from those phenomena. This is, of course, what Jungian psychology is all about . . . trying not to project belief into psychic phenomena, but to understand them as observable and classifiable. The Jungian learns about the nature of psyche by observing how the phenomena it produces seem to self-organize or fall into categories. Those categories (archetypes) are then studied and interpreted through theory. That is, the Jungian tries to decide why such-and-such an archetypal category exists and what purpose the phenomena falling into that pattern might serve.
All of this is in line with the scientific method . . . and although Jung developed this approach and the theories it helped generate more with intuition and intellectual discipline than through dedicated scientific studies, I think it is completely compatible with other forms of scientific data gathering. One of the greatest accomplishments of Jung's thinking was the valuation of previously ignored and devalued psychic phenomena (e.g., dreams, fantasies, myths, fairytales, theology, philosophy). Jung radically increased the available data for study and incorporation into a theory by recognizing that all of these human expressions are equally valid as psychic phenomena . . . and that these diverse expressions tend to fall into more specific and simpler patterns.
In order to recognize this, Jung had to overthrow the prejudices of the rationalistic positivism of his day. That took insight and courage. But the positivistic prejudice that was common among intellectual men in the 19th century has faded considerably since Jung's era. It still exists, no doubt, but science has managed to increasingly reduce its positivistic prejudice . . . and it has done this by continuing to collect more and more data that made the true nature of the prejudice recognizable as an arbitrary and counterproductive limitation to the scientific method.
Regrettably, Jungians have often gotten themselves stuck in the 19th century conflict between rationalism and romanticism that barely exists today (if at all). We have continued to decry rationalism in a way that is obsolete. That 19th century rationalism is a straw man. While materialistic science has managed to grow in what we could loosely call a "more-Jungian direction" (the increased valuation of previously discounted data), the Jungians have not adequately recognized the difference in this scientific movement, blinded as they have been by their own, more romantic, fundamentalism.
That is my primary concern. It seems to me dysfunction, maladaptive . . . a self-destructive behavior. My inclination is to treat it therapeutically. I would like to work toward healing this injury . . . but the first step is convincing Jungians that their behavior has become dysfunctional and that some therapeutic action is necessary. Jungianism is a stubborn patient, one who would die of a perfectly curable disease simply because the admission that it has a disease at all is too threatening to its pride.
So far nobody has answered any of my criticisms of modern psychology's incompetence. All I hear is that Jung was a mystic or worse by people who have no real understanding of Jungian psychology.
Yes, these accusation are frustrating . . . but the Jungians have not only done little or nothing to counteract these accusations, they have even thrown more fuel on the fire. This is, I think, a situation in which we can't validly blame the Other. Not, at least, more than we blame ourselves.
As for modern (more-positivistic) psychology's incompetence, on the contrary, I think this is widely acknowledged by the scientific communities outside of psychology. The field of psychology has had a complex for a long time. It has wanted so badly to prove it is a "real science" that it only too happily throws away any data it can't sell to the positivists for a good profit. And when one's subject of study is the psyche, this means that most of the data is ignored.
But, after a few decades of domination by positivistically-inclined behaviorism, the emergence of evolutionary psychology offers a potential paradigm shift. It may not satisfy a Jungian, but evolutionary psychology has started to make a lot of previously dismissed psychic phenomena more recognizable and valuated by science. Yes, some of the most positivistic evopsychs have made early stabs at trying to "reduce the mind" to the (inadequately understood) brain or to basic animal instincts. But this is what always happens in a new field. Early adopters get jazzed up and want to explain the universe with their new paradigm. But this never really works. Reality is much more complex than such limited paradigms allow. Evolutionary psychology as a field, to its credit, has already recognized that some of it early zealousness was untenable and moved to correct these errors.
Evopsych still has a limited focus, but it is not a reductive juggernaut. It is actually doing a great deal to valuate and reintroduce to scientific consideration many of the things Jung was most interested in. It hasn't managed to re-valuate everything the Jungians care about yet (like mysticisms, spirituality, and dream analysis), but it is slowly working its way in these directions (although, as yet unknowingly). What this offers Jungianism is a fantastic opportunity at rebirth. But we would have to put aside our tribal boundaries and prejudices and reach out our hand to the Other. That is, instead of the Little Jack Horner approach to grooming and regrooming our pet mysticisms in hermetic isolation, we could take a cue from evolutionary psychology and start making an effort to re-valuate them in a more scientifically viable way. If we do not make this effort, we effectively declare that Jungian "beliefs" are religious and not founded in any kind of scientific method. They could not, then, be considered theories. Theories are constructed in line with the scientific method.
I, for one, am not satisfied with a Jungian religion or belief system. I see a great deal of validity in Jung's ideas . . . and also a great deal of self-deceit in the New Age Jungian religiosity that has grown up around Jung's original theories. I am not willing to devalue or discard Jung's attempts at employing the scientific method to the study of depth psychology. In fact, I believe that to do so would be unethical, selfish, childish, and rather stupid.
But we've got ourselves mired in a tribal paradigm . . . where it is always the Other who is to blame for our woes. It won't be easy to get ourselves out of our Little Jack Horner Eden while we still have some pie to munch on and congratulate ourselves over. It's hard to convince anyone with our limited mindset that 1.) the pie will soon be gone and no new pies will be delivered, and 2.) this pie is really not healthy for us anyway. We are creatures of a limited diet . . . like children who will eat nothing but "chicken fingers". But chicken fingers make us happy, so why should we eat anything else? That is the child's perspective . . . and yet another indication of our puer nature. We don't want to grow up.
But unless some Jungians start playing parent and encouraging this big tribal infant that we've become to develop and adapt, it will not survive. Jungianism has long been an unparented child. I believe it is the responsibility of any Jungians who realize this to step up and do what they can.
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Here is my own take on how Jungian studies fit in with the larger scientific pursuit...and then I will lamely tie it back into this discussion (-)laugh2(-)
I think that Jung's best "evidence" rests in the comparative analysis of dreams and myths. We have seen popular approval of this work via Joseph Campbell who jump started his popularity via a PBS special which associated Star Wars with his work and brought in a larger audience (including myself) to the study of the archetypal. I think that there is sufficient work done on this aspect of study to say, "Yeah, these perennial motifs are valuable," but the value is best applied to personal growth (dream interpretation, active imagination) and higher-level forms of literary criticism and interpretation of art and writing and other archetypal creative forms.
Scientists want predictable, manipulable handles on their truths and need to see reality jump (or not jump) through their experimental hoops. This largely impossible in the realms of what are considered the "softer" social sciences. But one tool that has radically transformed science's ability to reach into new areas of experimental study is the computer. The computer could be seen as directly responsible for transforming the following scientific fields of research:
experimental psychology from behavioral (Skinner) to cognitive science
"part-whole studies" from systems thinking to complex adaptive systems
Note that both cognitive science and complex adaptive systems are containers for a variety of pre-existing studies or disciplines that were in early development or had been around for awhile, but are now grouped together for their mutual benefit.
For example, cognitive science includes:
cognitive psychology: with its computer-based perceptual experiments
philosophy of mind: which is simply philosophy where it focuses on the nature of mind or consciousness
artificial intellligence: which is an application of philosophy and also where the true theoretical computer geeks come in to attempt to model intelligence
neurobiology: which is originally a medical science is now also geared toward working with "higher level" understandings of the mechanics of neural functioning
Complex adaptive systems reworks some of the thinking of systems theory (which was, in retrospect, hugely limited by its lack (in the 30s and 40s) of computer technology) and groups together a lot of computer-based work including:
artificial intelligence: here the focus is on reproducing neural architectures rather than the higher level reasoning functions; artificial neural networks are one huge branch of modern AI research
artificial life: inspired by Conway's "Game of Life" which shows how low-level rules can give rise to interesting "higher-level" organization and behavior
chaos theory: which comes in as an early metaphoric influence which suggested that there is a value in a certain measure of disorder built into a system in its ability to respond to and adapt to changing external circumstances; concepts of fractional dimension and the butterfly effect help to broaden the range of causal behavior available to scientists
catastrophe theory: shows how small changes will accumulate into less frequent, major events
genetic algorythms: which is the computer simulation of successive populations undergoing interactions, mutations and reproductions could be called artificial evolution; it helps to explain the mechanisms and emergent order of simple life-like reproducing population-systems
With all of this new bottom-up material for reductionistic thinking there is plenty of hope for scientists to explain (or explain away) all of the wonderful intuitive concepts we Jungians tend to enjoy. Some halting progress towards understanding some higher level phenomenon that have out of the reach of the hard sciences is suggested here. This is still a reductionistic approach but such is the way of hard science.
For my own part my Master's thesis The Depth of Consciousness...
http://www.geocities.com/sealchan/depth.htm
...attempted to bridge a scientific-mathematical perspective (the shape of the universe as a whole) to a mystic's perspective (on the shape of the moral universe as a whole) to how the eye and the ear create a third "depth" dimension from two-dimension visual and auditory information. Since the sense of depth could be achieved equally from both the rational (mathematical-cosmological and moral spiritual orders) and the irrational (visual and auditory) perspectives, this suggests that certain forms are so redundant on so many layers as to warrant some attention to itself and to suggest that there may not be anything beyond this and that following out the symbolic character of such archetypal forms, noting the sense of the significance that doing so provides as well as the sobering qualitifications that the same connections require is to feel out the limits of consciousness and thereby to understand it. Perhaps by inverting that understanding and realizing that we view the world in this archetypal forms we can predict and verify there limitations and suitable valuate them as all part of the intuitive way of knowing that has value but in the context of its strengths and weaknesses. Consciousness is, in part, that profoundly varied world in which these symbolic motifs find themselves forever repeated in.
Possibly by this method, which is to allow the Jungian comparative analysis method to link into scientific content, we can depotentiate the mind-body problem by growing comfortable of working within the "shell" of our own consciousness, learn to recognize the limitations of that and be able to recognize when engagement with a more creative approach (multiple ways of knowing, openness to unconscious influences, etc) is also valuable.
There is also the oft neglected almost shadow sub-discipline of Jungian studies known as psychological typology. Outside of Psychological Types I don't see Jung integrating this theory into his other work. In my own dream work I tend to see it as a fairly constant explanatory dimension to my dreams.
Psychological typology has found its way into popular use (and abuse) and also into some scientists explicit studies and implicit models. In the realm of cognitive science comes Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences which brings to the educational realm new models for engaging young students in their varying intellectual capacities. I think this ties in with the softer academic and political movements which valuate plurality and multiple ways of knowing. Intelligence, as a mono-modal function is under heavy fire and hopefully no one will be taking a single, standard intelligence test seriously any longer. I think that Please Understand Me was probably very helpful in bringing this Jungian theory out and making it very popular in self-help circles. There is a not too small impact in corporate training environments and more managers that I have spoken to than I would have hoped have heard of Jung in this context.
Certain neurologists and neurobiologists who have endeavored to draw up theories of the conscious mind seem to gravitate toward some distinctions that reflect Jung's four functions without any explicit reference to or probably knowledge of the connection.
For example, Antonio Damasio proposes the somatic marker hypothesis which proposes a physical mechanism that would allow for a feeling-valuation type way of higher-order cognitive function to work. As evidence he refers to the case of Phineas Gage and his particular disabilities that seemed to specifically affect his rational feeling. Damasio connects this to Descartes' I think therefore I am as a purely thinking-logical statement of consciousness and claims this is in error because it ignores the equally important feeling context for this statement. By doing so Damasio is suggesting a non-mono-modal system of truth determination in the psyche. Also by using evidence of brain injury causes functional deficiency he is hooking into one of Gardner's requirements for determinin an intelligence type, in this case, his "interpersonal functioning" in particular.
Then there is Gerald Edelman who has formulated a theory of Neural Darwinism which puts onto the nerve cells the idea of a evolutionary model for how the brain learns. He proposes that there are two levels of consciousness one, the first order consciousness, which categorizes in the form of basic maps in the cerebral cortex and two, the higher order consciousness, which makes maps of maps and allows the brain to make "re-entrant" connections to its own lower order maps. Consciousness is the re-membering or re-categorization of maps and is done in connection with and independently of mapping changes that occur due to current stimulus. I think that Edelman may make room for inner originating input on the categorical level related to inner bodily processes and instincts. To me this all maps nicely as follows:
first order consciousness: sensation and intuition as irrational functions with sensation pointed toward the outer world and intuition pointed toward the inner world
higher order consciousness: thinking and feeling (although Edelman doesn't directly concern himself with these terms as I recall) which are rational functions that re-order the first-order maps that the irrational functions also make
To me it sounds like evolutionary psychology is trying to bring comparative anthropology into the lab or maybe just short cut to the reductive explanation. I haven't read much at all in this field but I think it is at least a valuable contribution to a more intelligent understanding of the brain. It probably could fit within the cognitive science realm. But if even dream sceintists (even those that focus on cataloging dream content) can ignore Jung then I don't hold out much hope for evolutionary psychology.
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Matt Koeske said, "I agree that the psyche tends to be non-literal, but I think the notion that the psyche is irrational is archaic and no longer tenable."
In order to understand self-destructive behaviour, one is invariably confronted with having to deal with God/gods and demons, which is something that is not in the domain of the rational. One could ostensibly put this sort of thing into a logical language sans the gods, but it would be meaningless to the soul of the suffering individual.
Unfortunately I am in the process of moving and I won't have much time to respond.
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Matt,
In an earlier post ( http://uselessscience.com/forum/index.php?topic=259.msg984#msg984 )I attempted to call attention to, basically, same the idea. Here is a critical portion from the post:
Studies of everyday reasoning show that we usually use reason to search for evidence to support our initial judgment, which was made in milliseconds. . .
I speculate that the source of the "initial judgment" are the archetypes. Then our consciousness, adapted to the culture, creates evidence to support the initial judgment.
Kafiri, I am am with you about the rationalizations of consciousness. The studies done on split-brain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_brain) patients (who've had their corpus callosum severed and confabulate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confabulation)/rationalize about things they see in the left side of their field of vision) make for especially nice demonstrations of our uncanny and unconscious rationalizing ability . . . although I'm sure there are many other rationalization studies (http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Confabulation_theory) that have been done in the cognitive science fields.
I'm still waffling on the notion that the archetypes are the (sole) source of the initial judgment or cognitive process. That is, it's a semantics issue I continue to juggle. What exactly (and physiologically or in relation to physiology) are the archetypes? I've more recently moved from trying to see them as instincts (but instincts as perceived by ego) to a position that differentiates them from instincts and sees them as more abstract categories (of observed data) applied to instinctual phenomena. In this differentiation, archetypes are defined in a more classically Jungian way. I felt that using this kind of definition might make my Jungian term usage less confusing for Jungians trying to understand my theoretical revisions.
But, for me, the instincts (which are specifically genetic and biological, even if not specifically local) are the real impetus behind archetypes. That is, archetypes are organized/organizable and numinous because they are housing instinctual drives with specific intentionality. The perceived intentionality of instincts gives archetypal dream figures their sense of Will and intelligence and purpose.
But as for the cognitive process that is pre- or unconscious, I think much of its character is a factor of its specific sense of order (an order based on the organization of its various parts or modules). I worry that the concept of archetype gets muddier (than I prefer) when it is applied to categories of psychic phenomena that are not easily personifiable or not easy to attribute intentionality or will to. So, for instance, every thought that pops into our heads is a product of an elaborate and continuous cognitive process that trundles along like a dynamic complex system. That process contains archetypal factors (that are personifiable), but I don't think we can say that the entire system and all its elements are easily personifiable.
It is possible to perceive something like a nodal/modular structure behind all thought. That is, thought is like a culinary concoction made up from various ingredients, but resulting in a specific "dish" (as it appears in consciousness). A trained connoisseur of the cognitive palate can detect and differentiate some of the notes or flavors in the dish (and probably determine the ingredients that composed it), but that is a self-reflective act and not in any way necessary to either consciousness or the cognitive process itself. For example, I have noted that there are specific qualities to the experiences of numinous feelings I've had . . . and a very physical or "chemical" characteristic that is an ingredient to these feelings. And that is something like a wine connoisseur noting a common quality of wines . . . say an "oakiness".
But such "oakiness" in the cognitive soup is not always personifiable. So we either have to expand the definition of archetype to encompass non-personified elements of cognition or we have to limit the definition of archetype to the more personifiable and intentional elements of cognition (which, as it happens, are fairly easily correlated with instincts). My concern is that the potentially expanded and non-personalized definition of archetype would make the concept too hazy. It would lose the quality I like most about Jung's terms, their tangibility that is so easy to relate to intuitively. Not like the terms often preferred in many modern, academic fields that are tremendously counterintuitive and wildly abstract . . . as if they were never intended to be used in real language/communication at all (because they "defy our intuitive physics" as Steven Pinker might say). There is still plenty of room for misunderstanding in Jungian language, but Jung's terms evoke specific images so well that there is always, at least, some kind of anchor for them. One could never deny that, say, Dante's Beatrice is an example of an anima figure . . . even if the specific traits and purpose of the anima are debatable.
Of course any semantic system has its fair share of arbitrariness . . . and I think we are on the same page meaning-wise. I guess I've been thinking about terms and semantics a lot recently between my post-Jungian glossary project and reading Steven Pinker's The Stuff of Thought.
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But such "oakiness" in the cognitive soup is not always personifiable. So we either have to expand the definition of archetype to encompass non-personified elements of cognition or we have to limit the definition of archetype to the more personifiable and intentional elements of cognition (which, as it happens, are fairly easily correlated with instincts). My concern is that the potentially expanded and non-personalized definition of archetype would make the concept too hazy. It would lose the quality I like most about Jung's terms, their tangibility that is so easy to relate to intuitively. Not like the terms often preferred in many modern, academic fields that are tremendously counterintuitive and wildly abstract . . . as if they were never intended to be used in real language/communication at all (because they "defy our intuitive physics" as Steven Pinker might say). There is still plenty of room for misunderstanding in Jungian language, but Jung's terms evoke specific images so well that there is always, at least, some kind of anchor for them. One could never deny that, say, Dante's Beatrice is an example of an anima figure . . . even if the specific traits and purpose of the anima are debatable.
I've been mulling over a distinction in the archetypal that I think is related to one you are making above...namely that there are the inner characters we encounter who bring to us in the form of interpersonal relationships the archetypal and there are non-personified motifs that are recurrent and so, potentially to be seen as part of the archetypal realm albeit with less of a sense of living animation. You also seem to want to cut out the non-personified motifs as not being as archetypal if I get your meaning above.
I think that this is probably an important intuitional difference between us, namely, I don't have a problem with the non-personifiable as also archetypal. In fact, I could almost swing the other way and say that the personified is less archetypal and more a matter of "energics". In other words, whatsoever motif gets associated to an inner personality is simply caught up in the energics of the ego-complex which is the primary energy "conduit" in the psyche (a.k.a. the necessary river). And when I say ego-complex I mean to carry with that the Self, anima, shadow, etc...the whole suite of possible inner characters as part of the one development of the individual psyche. In this sense the complex adaptive system at work is the one that is ordering these inner personalities (not as separate nodes but as different facets of the same initially "rough diamond") but the archetypes are the forms and channels for lidibo that preferentially direct libido into what will eventually take the shape of typological biases and other personal qualities.
I know we also disagree on the role that Jung types play in the psyche and I would say that they are a much more important factor than, perhaps, I have seen anyone treat them outside of the typological community. I believe that it is the case that the functional preferences are almost always an important part of interpreting a dream.
To me the archetypes are the "walls" of the psyche where pure psychic freedom finds itself invisibly directed. We don't see these walls unless we catalogue or otherwise "log" ourselves objectively and see that we think about food 1000 times a day and "peace on earth" (or some such thing) only once a day, but we might remember that day as the day when we thought about "peace on earth" and ignore the fact that we were in line at the soup kitchen most of the time.
I think of the instinctual is more like an inner sensory input that like light or sound provides an energic gradient that we must respond to. The archetypal is what is universal in our responses to the instinctual as it is passed through the sensory. I know that Jung combined the archetypal with the instinctual but I think the two could be separated, especially from a functional standpoint (to start to think like a cognitive scientist here).
I would functionally separate (and map onto the perceptual functions) as follows:
sensation: external and internal sensory input which in its volume and constancy probably creates a kind of tidal effect on the psyche. This tide ebbs and surges with the night and day cycle. The forms (sometimes referred to as qualia) of sensation provide an arbitrary kind of "spectral analysis" of otherwise continuous and undifferentiated stimuli.
instinct: habituated internal sensory input that has an apparent intentionality which generally is supportive of the survival of the individual or the species; an urge or desire or goal that is directed to a known or unknown end
intuition: like sensation it is a perception, an irrational (not systematically relational) truth, which is not actively funded by sensory input but by the invisible walls of psychic design. Intuition includes metaphorical and non-linguistic cognitive apprehensions. Intuitions require translation into the other functions (sensation, thinking, feeling) to gain truth-value. But comparative analysis of intuitions reveals the universal patterns that guide them.
Now it may be hard to differentiate what we might want to call an intuition from a memory or a habituated response which might be, phenomenologically identical. And the way I have defined instinctual makes it a little of both the sensory and the intuitive in how it is experienced phenomenologically.
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I've been mulling over a distinction in the archetypal that I think is related to one you are making above...namely that there are the inner characters we encounter who bring to us in the form of interpersonal relationships the archetypal and there are non-personified motifs that are recurrent and so, potentially to be seen as part of the archetypal realm albeit with less of a sense of living animation. You also seem to want to cut out the non-personified motifs as not being as archetypal if I get your meaning above.
I think that this is probably an important intuitional difference between us, namely, I don't have a problem with the non-personifiable as also archetypal. In fact, I could almost swing the other way and say that the personified is less archetypal and more a matter of "energics".
It's just a semantic difference . . . but I think I am making my distinctions based on my sense of "poet's logic" or "rhetorical craft logic". That is, what are the first things that come to mind for any Jungian or quasi-Jungian when we hear the term "archetype"? Anima, animus, shadow, hero, Self, wise old wo/man, Mother/Father, Child, etc. Every single one a personage. And so, it seems to me that the connotation of archetype (as conventionally used) implies personage. This is how the term began (with Jung) and how it was used for decades. Only more recently have some writers (like Anthony Stevens, I think) proposed that the term could be applied to cognitive structures and processes and tendencies that are not really personifiable.
Who (I'm just walking through my reasoning here . . .) does the term archetype "belong to"? I feel it belongs most to the Jungian tradition (in which it connotes personage). When we apply it to more aspects of cognitive structure (or only to those structural aspects), we run up against the problem that (as you mention) cognitive science and other fields have already offered up some terms for these structures. I'm wondering if archetype is really a better term for these things than the neuroscience and cognitive science terms. For the (very brief) sake of argument, let's say it actually is a better term. Well, tough titty, because cognitive science is a relative silverback to Jungianism's excommunicated runt gorilla. How long do we persist in clinging to our "archaic" terms while the world spins along without us (well, if history is any indication, we might go on doing this indefinitely)?
But, in my opinion, all that is (thankfully) moot, because the term "archetype" is really not as good as the cognitive science terms that connote structure. Archetype is clearly an abstract, categorical term:
ORIGIN Greek arkhetupon, from arkhe- ‘first, founding, primitive’ + tupos ‘a model’.
This connotation would not be permissible in the any modern field of neuroscience where positivism reigns. That's why I think newer terminology (that connotes structure, especially structural elements of a complex system) should be accepted or introduced to signify the structure of the psyche (that is largely unconscious).
Making any attempt to peel away the term archetype from the personages Jung characterized it with would also confound our still fledgling attempt to recognize instinctual energics (as you say) behind the Will or intentionality of these personages.
Why then appropriate a functional (if perhaps somewhat archaic) term and detach it more from what it originally (in Jungianism) signified? That seems inefficient to me. Of course, all of this reasoning is arbitrary . . . but it still viably argues for a definition of the term archetype that nails it down to instinct and to the psychic phenomena of compelling and numinous personages. Ooh . . . and one more thing comes to mind (-)monkbggrn(-) . . . we know quite a lot about the archetypal personages that Jung and the Jungians have focused most of their attention on. They are well documented and their appearances in human texts of all kinds are abundant. But we don't know very much about cognitive structures yet (regardless of materialistic feelings of superiority over the "soft sciences"). Why take a signifier away from something we know well and can identify immediately and reattach it to something that we are just getting the preliminary outlines of? Chances are very high that the sense of cognitive structure in neuroscience will be distinctly different in 20 years from now than it is today.
But archetypal personages, well, they will be just the same ;D.
Of course all that really matters is that the terms we use actually help us think about the things themselves more effectively . . . which is what a poet's or rhetorician's craft is dedicated to. Scientists think about things, while writers think about language.
In other words, whatsoever motif gets associated to an inner personality is simply caught up in the energics of the ego-complex which is the primary energy "conduit" in the psyche (a.k.a. the necessary river). And when I say ego-complex I mean to carry with that the Self, anima, shadow, etc...the whole suite of possible inner characters as part of the one development of the individual psyche.
The main problem I see with this construct (as I'm sure I've mentioned before) is that the personified archetypes always manifest to the ego as Other; they behave with Other intentions and act (and seem to think) autonomously. So I quibble with grouping them all under the label "ego-complex". The term is misleading and not efficiently descriptive.
In this sense the complex adaptive system at work is the one that is ordering these inner personalities (not as separate nodes but as different facets of the same initially "rough diamond") but the archetypes are the forms and channels for lidibo that preferentially direct libido into what will eventually take the shape of typological biases and other personal qualities.
I know we also disagree on the role that Jung types play in the psyche and I would say that they are a much more important factor than, perhaps, I have seen anyone treat them outside of the typological community. I believe that it is the case that the functional preferences are almost always an important part of interpreting a dream.
My issue with typology is not that I don't see differences between one personality and another or that I think it impossible to categorize these differences. I'm merely concerned that the Jungian system of typology is 1.) overly reductive, and 2.) not likely to match up accurately with cognitive structures (as those structures become increasingly elucidated by neuroscience). Both components of my concern are related to a discrepancy between what is and what we perceive. Nature vs. egoic perception.. When we can detect that Nature deviates from egoic perception on any given thing, following egoic perception over Nature is unscientific.
On the other hand, I think there's a good chance that the functions Jung choose (at least some of them) may correlate pretty well (although by no means perfectly) to certain cognitive modules or modes (albeit not to "personality types") . . . especially intuition and sensation. I feel that thinking and feeling were especially muddied by Jung and are liable (for different reasons) to not be compatible with developing science. My primary concern is that Jung's characterization of thinking and feeling are tainted by both the sexism of his era (and his personal disposition) and the intellectual classicism of Jung's specific (elite, academic, medical) culture.
More pertinent to the topics of this thread, I don't think archetypes are really the main sources for constructing what we see as typological differences between personalities. Archetypes (and again we can see how this connects them to instincts) are speciesistic and relate to general, universal adaptive behaviors in homo sapiens. Personality type is a more "fine-grained" and individualistic (i.e., reflecting the genetic differences between individuals) differentiator.
You mention dreams as indicative of typological importance . . . so hypothetically, we could say that one might have a dream of a character who seems to represent a different attitude or style of thinking or being than the one we prefer or identify most with. Probably an animi figure or a shadow figure. We could say (in conventional Jungian fashion) that if the ego is a "thinking type", the anima seems to be a "feeling type" . . . and that the attempt to relate to and even somewhat integrate the traits of the anima into the conscious attitude would designate an adaptive or healing movement.
That would be something like the standard or popular Jungian model . . . where the notion of progress or individuation is based on developing more diverse ways of thinking or attitudes toward living. Personal development of consciousness. But I wonder if that paradigm is not too specific to the kind of self-help, New Age "Me generation" we are more or less blindly indoctrinated into today . . . the kind of mindset that sees adaptivity as the cultivation of attitudes or styles of thought. Even in today's modern environment, such personal development is often more of a hobby than an adaptive, survival skill.
The difference in the model I favor is that the anima in this equation is not (on a more discerning level of "is-ness") the harbinger of attitudinal shift or balance (or consciousness development for the sake of consciousness development), but the representation of a compensatory movement of instinct that pushes against an overly rigid egoic attitude that had lost sufficient access to that instinct (and bogged down the functional efficiency of the complex system that is the organism). The anima is the ego's perception of the attractiveness, seductiveness, and valuation of a reinstigation of instinctual flow. The difference is that in this model, typology is an arbitrary factor of a homeostatic self-regulation of the organism's psychic system. I mean, the fact that the ego can call its anima a "feeling type" is ultimately meaningless to the process at hand. The process is dedicated to increasing adaptivity and plasticity in the ego by encouraging it to abide more functionally by instinct. It isn't really dedicated to "cultivating a more holistic attitude" or "developing an inferior intelligence".
I think the archetypal personages are characterized (with a certain amount of uniqueness in each of us) by the qualities of the libido that we are obstructing with our insistence (and usually a great deal of help from social conformity pressures) on a specific egoic rigidity. What is instinctual but cannot flow into the environment due to the way the ego has constructed itself will, in its attractive aspect (that turns the ego on with the promise of new energy and fulfillment), become the animi. Where the ego absolutely refuses to budge, the instinctual flow will seem like the shadow (as either Satan/Opponent or disgraceful/devalued but persistent obstacle). When the ego constructs a little niche of combativeness against its own rigidity or dysfunction, libido will pour into the hero archetype, the Self-aligned aspect of the ego (where the innate blessedness or greatness or divine birthright of the hero is the gift of libido from the Instinctual Self). As the ego constructs some space to imagine the Self as a whole, we get the god image or symbols of complex organization like mandalas (the ego is beginning to recognize that it is merely one organ in a vast living system).
So, to craft an analogy, let's say the Instinctual Self is like the waves of an ocean. The ego is a person at the beach who walks into the water. This person thinks, "The waves are slamming against me!" But the waves extend well beyond the person (who is like a point) in all directions. The waves are not specifically aligned against or directed at the person, but the person can be aligned against the waves. Now for the archetypes . . . they are defined primarily by the perspective (and projection) of the person standing in the waves. The Shadow is the result of the person thinking, "These damn waves are trying to knock me down! What the hell, can't they see I'm standing here?!". Of course, the ego never thinks that it is standing against something else or trying to "hold the waves back". The Anima or Animus is the product of the person thinking, "You know what, I really like the feeling of the waves carrying me into shore!" and imagining the waves as a transporter or pleasure-giver. The Hero, then, would think, "Dude! I have to learn how to surf so I can more fully appreciate these waves!" The Demon of the complex is the voice that whispers to us, "Surfing is a stupid, childish activity. Besides, you're not even any good at it. Why waste your time? You could be doing something much more important . . . like not budging! The waves only knock you down because you are so weak. If you weren't such a fuck-up, you could stand against any wave, no matter how large." The Wise Old Woman or Man might think, "These waves are not merely focused around you, but extend for vast stretches to your left and right, in front of you and in back. The entire ocean is an ecosystem in constant, complex motion . . . and it is all connected to the tidal forces generated by the moon."
When we say something like, "I am a thinking type, and my anima is a feeling type", we are limiting our understanding of the anima to a reductive and fixed perspective . . . one that is based on our own resistances. Thus, the anima is always telling us, "I am not what you think I am, I am much more. You can't define me from your current perspective. To know me (and to love me), you must expand your perspective." The types, in my opinion, exert a very reductive paradigm onto the experience of relationship between ego and instinct. I would even go so far as to posit that the particular reductiveness of the typological paradigm is actually the result of what the paradigm itself would consider a specific typological prejudice (in this case, thinking). That is, to reduce this natural dynamic to a four type system requires a very limited and fixed perspective. That isn't to say that it is therefore "wrong" or that it will only produce illusion. We can still get some useful understanding of the psyche out of this paradigm. But since it is firmly based on ego perspective, there will always be particular limitations to what it can "know" and how well it can know it.
I simply think we have reached a level of general knowledge about human psychology, biology, and neurology that exposes the innate weaknesses of the typological paradigm and renders it no longer helpful as a tool for understanding the psyche scientifically.
To me the archetypes are the "walls" of the psyche where pure psychic freedom finds itself invisibly directed. We don't see these walls unless we catalogue or otherwise "log" ourselves objectively and see that we think about food 1000 times a day and "peace on earth" (or some such thing) only once a day, but we might remember that day as the day when we thought about "peace on earth" and ignore the fact that we were in line at the soup kitchen most of the time.
I think of the instinctual is more like an inner sensory input that like light or sound provides an energic gradient that we must respond to. The archetypal is what is universal in our responses to the instinctual as it is passed through the sensory. I know that Jung combined the archetypal with the instinctual but I think the two could be separated, especially from a functional standpoint (to start to think like a cognitive scientist here).
This seems to agree with my analogy above. As for Jung, he didn't equate instinct and archetype, but always said things like, "archetype is founded on instinct" or "archetypes accumulate around instinctual drives" [paraphrasing] or something like that. I have made attempts in the past to cement the relationship between instinct and archetype that Jung hinted at, because Jungians have managed to forget much of what such a relationship would imply about the structure and behavior of archetypal personages. That is, Jungians have mythologized the archetypes to be like characters in a story, but they never ask, "But why would such a force have evolved? What adaptive purpose would it serve?" As a result, their myth is too reductive. A Good Fiction should enable us to ask all kinds of dangerous questions (and deduce credible answers).
I would functionally separate (and map onto the perceptual functions) as follows:
sensation: external and internal sensory input which in its volume and constancy probably creates a kind of tidal effect on the psyche. This tide ebbs and surges with the night and day cycle. The forms (sometimes referred to as qualia) of sensation provide an arbitrary kind of "spectral analysis" of otherwise continuous and undifferentiated stimuli.
instinct: habituated internal sensory input that has an apparent intentionality which generally is supportive of the survival of the individual or the species; an urge or desire or goal that is directed to a known or unknown end
intuition: like sensation it is a perception, an irrational (not systematically relational) truth, which is not actively funded by sensory input but by the invisible walls of psychic design. Intuition includes metaphorical and non-linguistic cognitive apprehensions. Intuitions require translation into the other functions (sensation, thinking, feeling) to gain truth-value. But comparative analysis of intuitions reveals the universal patterns that guide them.
See, you didn't find a place for thinking and feeling either :). I don't have any strong disagreements with any of this . . . but I would quibble with your construction of intuition, because your characterization seems to me to be less of a cognitive (neurological) structure or mode. E.g., "an irrational truth". I think intuition can, alternatively, be seen as a very practical function that helps the psyche perceive complex relationships as wholes. It could relate to the stuff I posted in the other thread about Confabulation Theory. Intuition takes a collection of parts and constructs a whole, filling in the missing pieces. It is a pattern recognizer. Not "irrational", but perhaps not always accurate, because it confabulates or predicts pieces of the pattern that are missing (although it confabulates logically or within a certain arbitrary but logical parameters). Intuition extrapolates, but it doesn't bother to "fact-check" or make sure all the pieces in the pattern it constructs are verifiable. Our intuition might provide a perfectly viable construction of a potential thing or event . . . but reality may turn out to be entirely different (because some complex things are very hard to predict or reconstruct with guesswork).
I worry that there is a tendency in Jungianism that muddles the understanding of intuition. Namely, intuition is conflated far too often with "belief" and a willingness to believe in supernatural or metaphysical things. I don't really think this kind of thing is an example of "intuition at its most expansive" (as many believers would have it). My guess is that it is much more likely that such "intuitions" are the products of an egoic position that greatly devalues "the real" (or, we could say, the sensation function). So instead of bothering with the problematic technicalities of realness, it over-constructs paradigms based on projection. At its most extreme, this becomes animism (which is fairly common in Jungian thinking). So the definition of the "intuitive type" in many Jungian circles is very close to "the animistic believer". And therefore has nothing to do with the real aptitude of intuitive intelligence. Intuition (as a kind of cognitive muscle) can't be measured by how much it can believe in that can't in any way be verified by either the senses or by logic . . . but by its accuracy in prediction and construction (confabulation). Therefore, when we characterize a "strong intuitive", we should think of someone like Jung himself who was not one to ignore the quanta (or qualia, as you say), when available, that an intuitive pattern is pieced together from. He was very dedicated to collecting as much relevant data as he could find . . . and he used this data very skillfully. The strength of an intuition is, I think, more a matter of how many (perhaps seemingly unrelated) quanta can be pulled together into a relational pattern that makes sense as a whole. I.e., how functional at predicting or constructing the real is the intuitive paradigm or construction? In that loose definition, intuition is not "irrational", but a functional cognitive tool that would understandably have been selected during human evolution.
The Jungians who so frequently fall under the category "intuitive types" are often not very skilled intuitives at all . . . a sad irony to this favored Jungian typology.
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You mention dreams as indicative of typological importance . . . so hypothetically, we could say that one might have a dream of a character who seems to represent a different attitude or style of thinking or being than the one we prefer or identify most with. Probably an animi figure or a shadow figure. We could say (in conventional Jungian fashion) that if the ego is a "thinking type", the anima seems to be a "feeling type" . . . and that the attempt to relate to and even somewhat integrate the traits of the anima into the conscious attitude would designate an adaptive or healing movement.
I still have a lot of mileage of application of this idea to do in dream work. I also have this separative-connective thing which I think might be a simplified logos-eros understanding of what often gets mapped to masculine-feminine. I find myself not wanting to think (but finding this demonstrated in actual dreams) that thinking and masculine and separate and logos all tie together better on one side and feeling and feminine and connective and eros all tie together better on the "other" side. That sure seems suspiciously like a patriarchal preference but the "data" seems to keep coming back to that against my politically correct personal values. In an effort to address this I wrote a somewhat confused entry in the Dream Dictionary called Wheel of opposites as super-archetype. I don't think I have the thinking perspective quite yet to describe the intuition I have regarding this. In this sense all of these polarized psychic qualities are archetypal because they are universal motifs. That is how I see the archetypal...just universal and pattern.
That would be something like the standard or popular Jungian model . . . where the notion of progress or individuation is based on developing more diverse ways of thinking or attitudes toward living. Personal development of consciousness. But I wonder if that paradigm is not too specific to the kind of self-help, New Age "Me generation" we are more or less blindly indoctrinated into today . . . the kind of mindset that sees adaptivity as the cultivation of attitudes or styles of thought. Even in today's modern environment, such personal development is often more of a hobby than an adaptive, survival skill.
I think these days I probably do see that without the functional balance taken into the equation, it might be impossible to make adaptive improvements. Right now I would probably describe the eruptions of the Wounds or complexes as driven by bad functional management (bad collaborative effort in the egoic board room). Searching the functional failings (follow your suffering) and finding where they are nurtured (follow your bliss) seems to be the way to go. With follow your suffering you must heroicly look your pain and vulnerability in the eye and acknowledge it. This will drain the energy out of the Wound which frees up psychic range of motion. With "follow your bliss" you find the most accessible path for the exercising your weaker functions because what is numinous comes in best via the weaker functions. This path is hard to follow because following your bliss is like letting your inferior functions run the board room. Every psychic resistance under the sun comes up under those circumstances.
And you don't have to connect the suffering to the bliss consciously...working it from both ends fosters growth (aka adaptation). It is how you drive the psychic car of individuation without having to know all the details.
The difference in the model I favor is that the anima in this equation is not (on a more discerning level of "is-ness") the harbinger of attitudinal shift or balance (or consciousness development for the sake of consciousness development), but the representation of a compensatory movement of instinct that pushes against an overly rigid egoic attitude that had lost sufficient access to that instinct (and bogged down the functional efficiency of the complex system that is the organism). The anima is the ego's perception of the attractiveness, seductiveness, and valuation of a reinstigation of instinctual flow. The difference is that in this model, typology is an arbitrary factor of a homeostatic self-regulation of the organism's psychic system. I mean, the fact that the ego can call its anima a "feeling type" is ultimately meaningless to the process at hand. The process is dedicated to increasing adaptivity and plasticity in the ego by encouraging it to abide more functionally by instinct. It isn't really dedicated to "cultivating a more holistic attitude" or "developing an inferior intelligence".
I would insert typology as the overriding "software" of the psychic system running on an "operating system" that is compatible with all four functions. I think functional preference strongly guides and determines the types of complexes that the individual faces such that if one could survey individuals and ask them to record their strongest complex type and their typology there would be strong correlations.
Another thing is that energy is the primary consideration. Whether that energy is instinctual or not is really irrelevant. If one is really hungry then one might consider one is getting a lot of psychic energy from an instinctual source that directs the individual to find food. Experience channels libido and culturalization and experience (consequences of selfishness) allow for delay of gratification to a point where we can be very hungry but not concerned because we are habitually certain that we will be getting our next meal one way or another (at least in a fairly stable, affluent society where food can even come cheap and fast via a drive-thru window). What is instinct and what is the force of channeled libido is phenomenologically indistinguishable. It is only through a study of the emergent patterns of behavior that we come to say "My hunger is instinctual, my anorexia is "psychologically conditioned" by the expectations of society and my own management of self-worth or addictive lack thereof".
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Matt Koeske said, "I agree that the psyche tends to be non-literal, but I think the notion that the psyche is irrational is archaic and no longer tenable."
In order to understand self-destructive behaviour, one is invariably confronted with having to deal with God/gods and demons, which is something that is not in the domain of the rational. One could ostensibly put this sort of thing into a logical language sans the gods, but it would be meaningless to the soul of the suffering individual.
Unfortunately I am in the process of moving and I won't have much time to respond.
Dealing with "God/gods and demons" of self-destructive behavior may appear to be irrational, but where, or with whom does the irrationality lie? Did not Jung look below the irrational surface of such things as alchemy, myth and the like to find the rational aspects that exist below the surface? This method persists today in the works of innovative Jungian thinkers such as Donald Kalsched whose book "The Inner World of Trauma, Archetypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit," is one of the most widely acclaimed Jungian publications of recent times.
It seems to me that Kalsched supplies rational explanations for self-destructive behavior. And, does not make the experience meaningless, but, in fact, amplifies and expands their meaning.
To experience such anxiety threatens the total annihilation of the human personality, the destruction of the personal spirit. This must be avoided at all costs and so, because such trauma often occurs in early infancy before a coherent ego(and its defenses) is formed, a second line of defenses comes into play to prevent the "unthinkable" from being experienced. . .In psychoanalytic language they are variously known as the "primitive" or "dissociative" defenses; for example, splitting, projective identification, idealization or diabolzation, trance-states, switching among multiple centers of identity, depersonalization, pschic numbing, etc. Psychoanalysis has long understood these primitive defenses both characterize severe psychopathology and also(once in place) cause it. But rarely in our compemporary literature do these defenses get any "credit," so to speak, for having accomplished anything in the preservation of life for the person whose heart is broken by trauma. And while everyone agrees how maladaptive these defenses are in the later life of the patient, few writers have acknowledged the miraculous nature of these defenses - their life-saving sophistication or their archetypal nature and meaning.
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. . .Careful study of such dreams in the clinical situation leads to our main hypothesis that the archaic defenses associtaed with trauma are personified as archetypal daimonic images. In other words, trauma-linked dream imagery represents the psyche's self-portrait of its own archaic defensive operations. (p. 2)
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. . .When other defenses fail, archetypal defenses will go to any length to protect the Self - even to the point of killing the host personality in which this personal spirit is housed(suicide). (p. 3)
. . .
Like the immune system of the body, the self-care system system carries out its functions by actively attacking what it takes to be "foreign" or "dangerous" elements. Vulnerable parts of the self's experience in reality are seen as just such "dangerous" elements and are attacked accordingly. These attacks serve to undermine the hope in real object-relations and to drive the patient more deeply into fantasy. And, just as the immune system can be tricked into attacking the very life it is trying to proctect(auto-immune disease), so the self-care system can turn into a "self-destruct system" which turns the inner world into a nightmare of persecution and self-attack. (p. 24)
Donald Kalsched, The Inner World of Trauma, Archeypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit.
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See, you didn't find a place for thinking and feeling either . I don't have any strong disagreements with any of this . . . but I would quibble with your construction of intuition, because your characterization seems to me to be less of a cognitive (neurological) structure or mode. E.g., "an irrational truth". I think intuition can, alternatively, be seen as a very practical function that helps the psyche perceive complex relationships as wholes. It could relate to the stuff I posted in the other thread about Confabulation Theory. Intuition takes a collection of parts and constructs a whole, filling in the missing pieces. It is a pattern recognizer. Not "irrational", but perhaps not always accurate, because it confabulates or predicts pieces of the pattern that are missing (although it confabulates logically or within a certain arbitrary but logical parameters). Intuition extrapolates, but it doesn't bother to "fact-check" or make sure all the pieces in the pattern it constructs are verifiable. Our intuition might provide a perfectly viable construction of a potential thing or event . . . but reality may turn out to be entirely different (because some complex things are very hard to predict or reconstruct with guesswork).
Hey, I don't mean to devalue intuition. After all it is my favorite function! (-)appl(-)
It was Jung that first sold me on the value of calling something irrational and this is how he has described intuition and sensation...as irrational functions to the functions thinking and feeling which are rational. The rational functions seem more amenible to conscious access. The "truths" of the rational functions are more amenible to correction via connection to other rational truths somehow. The irrational functions present more isolated "facts" that are not so easily held up to other facts in "relationship" but are to be taken as is per their occurrence. So by irrational I don't mean to devalue but to recognize the kind of perceptual, fluidity of the "truths" they produce.
Accuracy of the irrational functions comes from the clarity of the perceptive act, the lack of distractions and the granularity with which one can make distinctions. The accuracy of the rational functions comes more from how the proposed truth or observation relates to other truths and beliefs.
Also the fact of their irrationality to me makes sensation and intuition all the more like to a product of a cognitive mode because it is more clear to me that we are granted these perceptions by an unconscious, neurological mechanism than we are the truths of thinking and feeling because the truth-trees they produce speak more loudly to me of the cultural forests they find themselves in than of the biological-physical ground they grow out of. As much as I trust my brain to create an accurate visual respresentation of my immediate surroundings without my conscious assistance I would trust the accuracy of my intuition. But I don't expect of my intuitions to necessarily fit into a logical whole or make a valuable contribution to that whole.
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Hey, I don't mean to devalue intuition. After all it is my favorite function! (-)appl(-)
It was Jung that first sold me on the value of calling something irrational and this is how he has described intuition and sensation...as irrational functions to the functions thinking and feeling which are rational.
Not to worry. I understand. My decision to object to the term "irrational" was meant as a direct reaction to Jung's own usage. I just worry that it is another one of those "perspectual" terms (in its Jungian usage). I.e., the way the ego works is "rational", the way the unconscious works is "irrational". If anything, I would put this the other way around. The unconscious seems to perceive things more-accurately and completely than the ego. The ego is a "glancer" that looks very briefly at information and decides how to reconstruct it into something familiar and useful to the ego's style of thinking. Lots of room for "misperceiving".
Rational is a woolly word that is often used to mean a lot of different things. It's usually associated with reason, but reasoning doesn't have to have anything to do with truth. Alternatively, we could say that the irrational lacks reason . . . but does that mean it lacks causality or logic or predictability? I don't know. Just thinking about how to accurately apply rational and irrational to Jung's functions for a couple minutes leaves me with "woolly fever". I just don't think they are the best words to use. They are not innately descriptive (of the functions), but require a specific redefinition or semantic tweak. To my taste, that kind of tweak is inefficient and suggests that better terms could be found.
Of course, that's me thinking like a linguist or poet again.
As for the thinking function, as I've said in the past, I'm not sure it really exists (as Jungians construct it). I think it is merely the "ego-function" as filtered through Jung's era and specific class . . . where it was the embodiment of the way intellectual males identified themselves (and less frequently, intellectual females). Also, many of the lay Jungians I've encountered are always criticizing "thinking types" for being rigid . . . but these critics seems just as rigid to me (and in the same ways). It's all sloppy language that is widely misused and misunderstood.
I'm not saying it is misused and misunderstood by you. You're a very organized and insightful thinker. But many Jungians have no clue what they are talking about. "Thinking Type" has turned into a Jungian put-down . . . and "Intuitive Type" has become a way of branding those who belong to the tribe of Jung. I'm just concerned that these terms have ultimately caused more confusion and harm than they have provided insight.
I used the type system to think about my inner life and my dreams for many years (until very recently). It's not entirely dysfunctional . . . but I felt like a time came when I started to feel that it was holding back my understanding instead of facilitating it. Like using the wrong tool for the job (hammering with a wrench, let's say). Yes, you can drive nails with a wrench . . . but not as easily or precisely as you can with a hammer.
Of course, the time I started to sense this inadequacy was when I started mixing with other Jungians at K. When I saw how screwed up their understanding of the type system was, I realized that I couldn't keep using that same language without sending woolly, mixed messages to those who used the terms so confusedly. Therefore, like a good poet, I decided to find new language, language that better expresses the thing itself, the signified. Of course I'm still in the process of deciding what this might be.
And as for the feeling function, I think there could be a correlation to an unconscious valuation system in the brain that somehow reinforces certain memory connections and consolidations. The connections that get a lot of reinforcement (probably some kind of neurochemical stimulus) are perceived as more valued by our sense of self. Valuating such neuronal connections helps reinforce memory constructs and the complex connectedness of thoughts. But we also experience some kind of emotion in valuation, an approval for certain connections that "feels right". If it feels "really, really right", that feeling could be numinousness. I suspect that such valuations are quantitative and "measurable" by degree of reinforcement.
But here we run into the problem of Jung's specific differentiation between feeling and emotion/affect. If the model I'm suggesting is in some way accurate (and it at least agrees with an element of the Confabulation Theory I posted about elsewhere), then a clear distinction can't really be made between feeling and emotion. That is, not because they are equivalent, but because they are connected, are two elements of one thing: valuation. Emotion is essential and can't be devalued into affect in the conventional Jungian way. Emotion can tell us where value is . . . although not what it is. Emotion isn't "wrong" or inaccurate until it is interpreted through egoic perception. But without this interpretation it is merely a beacon of valuation that homes in on a specific connective structure of memory or thought.
Also, in the construction of feeling above, we have another autonomous, unconscious psychic module in "feeling". Not a conscious one. Just as you said about sensation and intuition. My conclusion is that sensation, intuition, and feeling are all akin to unconscious and autonomous cognitive functions . . . and therefore cannot be considered the "functions of consciousness". Also, this leaves thinking as the "conscious function". Therefore, the "ego-function". Essentially, I think we are all "thinking types" by the Jungian typological system. Thus, when Jungians criticize someone as a "thinking type", they mean that that person is an egoic thinker who holds different beliefs then the critic does.
Of course, to say we are all thinking types is like saying we are all human and conscious. The term becomes worthless. It ceases to describe the actual differences among personalities . . . begging for either a new typological system or some alternative to one.
This is why I feel that Jung's types work better as functions than they do as personality types. Alternatively, we could say that an "intuitive type" is really just a thinking type that relies more heavily on the function of intuition than any other unconscious function of intelligence. But I'm not sure that construct is really very helpful.